For too long, women have been underserved by mainstream companies. Thankfully, this is changing as the femtech industry across Southeast Asia leads the way with an influx of products and services being created for women by women.
While market analysts predict that the Asia-Pacific femtech market will grow at the fastest rate between 2022 to 2030, Southeast Asia’s femtech industry continues to lag behind compared to the West, making up only eight per cent of femtech firms globally.
Despite the advancements in the technology sector, there is still much to be done when it comes to closing the gender gap in the region. Nonetheless, in today’s landscape, there’s a myriad of opportunities for femtechs to make a difference by eliminating the traditional barriers that have held women back. But to do so successfully, they must first overcome challenges commonly encountered in the femtech space.
The challenges in the femtech space
Traditionally, women’s health issues have been deemed taboo, with sexual health often stigmatised, especially in the conservative Southeast Asian region. On top of this, men continue to dominate the fields of medical research, forming a bulk of the researchers and patients in clinical trials. This approach has resulted in a one-size-fits-all approach to medical diagnosis and solutions that often don’t serve women.
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The good news is that we’re seeing the rise of femtechs who operate with the main goal of closing gaps in women’s health. Despite this growth, a large challenge remains to bring conversations around women’s health issues into the mainstream.
Misinformation is indeed ripe, especially as women’s health conversations remain behind closed doors and are constantly fueled by old wives’ tales. In this respect, knowledge is indeed power, and technology has played a big role in empowering more women through education.
Social media, for one, is a tool we actively use at Ease, and is one similarly leveraged by other femtechs. It has been instrumental in knowledge sharing and community building for us and has helped us and other femtechs to bring educational content to more women in the region.
That said, advertising restrictions on social media have been a pain point for femtech companies globally. A study that surveyed 60 health-oriented businesses serving women and people of diverse genders revealed that Meta rejected all their ads, and half said their accounts were suspended for supposedly violating policies.
By contrast, male ads about erectile dysfunction and manscaping were allowed. As a result, femtech companies are leaning on euphemisms and emojis to conceal words that are considered high-risk by regulators. Although these ads are more successful, they unwittingly reinforce the stigma around women’s health.
We at Ease have had numerous ads banned and even our account frozen at some point for publishing advertisements relating to female sexual health and wellness, even though these advertisements did not include any explicit or suggestive content.
To resolve this issue, we tested the algorithms on the platforms repeatedly to see how they would react to certain content and avoided or censored certain words, colours, or shapes that might lead to our posts being flagged.
We also established a communication channel with relevant decision-makers within social media platforms to get their assistance when we encounter such situations. Additionally, we’ve also turned our focus to creating organic, viral content rather than relying on paid advertisements.
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When navigating the complex rules online, companies need to understand and uphold the compliance rules that each social media platform has in place to avoid advertising bans and kickstart their marketing campaigns. However, most femtech startups do not have the luxury and flexibility to experiment with their marketing campaigns. To bypass ad restrictions, more creative resources will need to be allocated to explore innovative ways of storytelling.
The future of femtech in Southeast Asia
Despite the challenges, the femtech industry in Southeast Asia continues to reap massive potential, with many analysts predicting tremendous growth until 2030. Although nations such as Singapore have struggled with taboo conversations around sexual health, we have seen a vast improvement over the last five years in attitudes towards female issues and the challenges that, until now, women have faced on their own.
Femtech Analytics, for example, predicts that by 2026, the Asia-Pacific region will be seeing the world’s fastest growth in women’s health apps. Modern women are no longer suffering in silence. They are taking a proactive approach to their healthcare by tracking periods, monitoring fertility, and sexual wellness while leveraging femtech solutions to identify hormonal disorders and even screen for cancer.
Rather than feeling overwhelmed by the daunting advertising restrictions that have traditionally held the industry back, femtech companies now have plenty of options to work around any obstacles in their path. There is much more to be excited about now that even social media companies actively want to be seen as a part of the solution for women rather than part of the problem.
Women’s health is much more than reproductive health. As we enter a new era of precision medicine and precision health, it is opening opportunities to celebrate our differences while taking gender-specific treatment and care more seriously. Women-centric health technology is finally bridging the healthcare gap, and we can safely predict that the Southeast Asian region will lead the way, and femtech businesses will continue to thrive.
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